


In our dreams we never left

by EllaStorm



Category: David Bowie (Musician)
Genre: Drinking & Talking, Drug Addiction, F/M, Goodbyes, Time Skips, Unspoken Romance, a little bit of smut, a lot of cigarettes, a splash of angst, several eras, the ridiculous gorgeousness of David Bowie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-23
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:59:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057353
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllaStorm/pseuds/EllaStorm
Summary: England in 1973. The glam movement is in full swing, at its front an unearthly, dramatic creature, beguiling his audience with music and sex. Enter a 20-something, impressionable girl, thrown backstage into his dressing room by a chain of unlikely events, and curious to take a look behind the facade...





	1. 1973 - "She'll come, she'll go..."

**Author's Note:**

> Dear reader.
> 
> The (inevitable) thing has happened: Me, writing David Bowie RPF. Even though I have resorted to not using names (for either character), to stay out of the self-insert-zone at least in theory, it is quite obvious who and what this story is about, since I couldn't hold back on the album titles, chronology, and/or apt descriptions of Ziggy's look.
> 
> But then, the Muse has decided to snog me, and you don't tell a Muse no. So, here we are.
> 
> The only thing I can really say for myself at this point, is that this was written with a lot of love and admiration in my heart.  
> Enjoy, or laugh, or do whatever you might with this story. It belongs to all of you. And, of course, to him.
> 
> Ella

 

 The smell inside the dressing room was particular, but not unpleasant – a combination of smoke, powder, perfume and nail polish. Clothes and palettes of eye shadow were covering every surface, and she spotted several blow dryers, cans of gel and hairspray, boxes of cigarettes, ashtrays and a few empty wine bottles among them. A dressing table with a wide, well-lit mirror occupied considerable parts of the room, but its true centrepiece was the man sitting in front of the table on a revolving chair. He was currently busying himself with fixing his make-up, but his reflected gaze immediately focused on her as she entered, and she noticed a slight upward curl of his lips that she acknowledged with a smile of her own.

He was still wearing the blue and turquoise eye shadow he had been sporting on stage, heavy black kohl around his eyes, a thick base of pale powder and more than just a modicum of rouge on his high cheekbones. Such a get-up would have looked ridiculous on anyone. On him it looked just the right kind of eccentric, adding to the odd beauty of his long, angular face.

“Hello again” he said in the softest tone of voice, putting the powder box aside without breaking eye contact through the mirror.

“Hello.” She stepped forward rather awkwardly, and closed the door behind her. This was a weird situation – but then, she didn’t usually meet extravagant rock idols under bewildering circumstances and got a backstage pass out of it. Normal standards didn’t apply here, not to this situation, and definitely not to the man in the mirror. She would either have to deal with this, or walk away, back to the quaint little confines of whatever counted as normal. But that wasn’t exactly an apt way to go about satisfying her curiosity. And, dear God, was she ever so curious about this man.

“Did you enjoy the show?” he asked. He looked genuinely interested in her verdict.

She blinked and recalled the vast amounts of distilled sexual energy that had been radiating off the stage during his whole performance, driving the audience completely out of their minds and a lot of girls around her to tears. “It was like nothing I have ever seen before,” she replied, truthfully.

“Good.” He smiled, properly this time, and went back to fussing with his make-up.

“What is it like?” she wanted to know, after a few seconds of silence.

“On stage?”

“Embodying this alien creature. Not just on stage.”

He laughed, delicately. “Bizarre, mostly. And more than just a little excessive. But I’d lie if I said I didn’t enjoy it. Concert halls full of people listening to this music, the intensity of the emotion it brings out in them – it’s quite…sexy.” He paused, a smile playing on his lips, that was both lewd and impossibly appealing, before a quizzical expression took its place. “What colour should I do my lips?”

She took a few more steps into the room, until she came to stand directly behind him. “Pink. Like kissed,” she said, unthinking.

His gaze went wandering across her face, right down to her mouth, where it stayed for a long moment, before returning to her eyes with interest. They looked at each other in the mirror, long enough for her to watch his pupils dilate, and for her pulse to speed up significantly in return.

“Good choice,” he finally stated, velvet in his voice.

 

He took his eyes off her and went on to produce a gloss from his drawer, that he started covering his lips in. The tension dissipated slightly, and she felt like breathing again.

“Are you coming to the afterparty?”, he asked, offhandedly.

“If you’ll have me.”

“I will,” he gave back, still intent on his lip gloss, and the gentle determination in his words made her heart skip and her breath freeze in her throat once more. After the last stroke of gloss, he turned his eyes back on her, this time examining her more thoroughly from hair to heels, tilting his head to one side like a cat. “Your dress is a dream. But a dash of glitter would make it even better,” he decided, rising from his chair.

 

She noticed that he had abandoned his body suit from earlier for a pair of tightly fitted black and grey striped pants and a shimmery see-through shirt with a wide neckline and blue geometrical patterns stitched onto it. Dark blue leather platform boots and a glittering pendant around his neck completed the outfit.

“Sit down, love. Let’s put some stardust on you.”

The touch of his hands on her shoulders as he sat her down in the chair felt deliberate, and they remained there long after she’d taken her seat, warm and reassuring. His hands were strangely appealing in and of themselves – the fingers on them too long, a little too bony, but elegant and strong in what they did. Just like the rest of him, really.

“I’m thinking silver on your cheeks and eyelids.” She nodded agreement.

He turned the chair around, so she could no longer see the mirror, but he could see her, face to face, and she closed her eyes, as he rummaged around on the dressing table. A little box snapped open; there was some clattering and then the soft whooshing sound of a make-up brush, just before it caressed her cheek. Two long fingers touched her chin as the brush went to work on one side, then the other. They disappeared for a few seconds, before returning together with a smaller brush that distributed a powdery substance on her closed lids.

“Open your eyes”, he said, far too soon, his breath tickling her nose, and she felt the chair turn beneath her.

 

Looking at her own reflection she found that he had been right: The glitter suited her.

“Lips?”, she asked – but she knew the answer long before he gave it.

“Pink,” he said, smiling at her through the mirror. “Like mine.”

The chair beneath her turned again, and this time she left her eyes open when he hunkered down to apply the gloss, taking in the concentrated expression on his face, while his index finger carefully spread it on her parted lips.

“Done?” she asked as he took his hand away to admire his work, but he shook his head.

“Not quite.”

She didn’t have time to be shocked about it, before he kissed her, one hand against her glittering cheek, assertive but gentle, sucking on her lower lip for a moment before letting go entirely.

“There. Just the perfect shade,” he whispered, like it was a secret.

 

Then he got up, stretching out his hand towards her.

“Ready?”

Her knees didn’t feel very trustworthy, and there was a swarm of butterflies desperately trying to escape her chest cavity through her trachea, but somehow she managed to grab his hand and let herself be pulled to her feet.

 

 

***

 

 

Even after walking through the door of the dressing room he kept her hand in his, like it was a matter of course, leading her through a labyrinth of stairs and passageways to the back door of the theatre.

“There will be some people outside. Don’t let go of me,” he said, and opened it.

The first thing she heard were several loud screams, followed by a chorus of voices that all started to talk and shout agitatedly over each other. She squeezed his hand harder as she got dragged into a sea of bodies, flashlights and noises until she felt like she would drown in them. But his hand pulled her further, always further, and suddenly she sat down in a comfortable leather seat, a car door closed next to her, and they were driving off. His hand was still curling around hers; light enough now to allow her to slip away if she wanted. She liked the easy, confident manner in which he touched her, not possessive in any way, but like it was completely natural to do so. It made her feel as if she belonged at his side, like he wanted her to be there – and maybe he did, for this evening. Maybe that was what he had decided on when he’d painted her lips the same colour as his and sealed them with a kiss. She wouldn’t put it past him.

 

“Have you ever been to Eden Club?” he asked.

She shook her head no.

“That’s where we’re going. It’s a fantastic place. I’ve done a few performances there in my time.”

“Before you were selling out concert halls.”

He chuckled.

“Yes. Now, tell me,” he said. “What is your favourite colour?”

She thought about it. “Black. But then, it’s not actually a colour. It’s just – the absence of colour. Apart from the inherent paradox of that I’m very glad to say that I don’t discriminate against any colours. It’s a very socially compatible approach.”

“And a very nihilistic one.”

“Look who’s talking.”

The edges of his mouth curled up in amusement. “I have no idea what you are on about.”

She put a playfully thoughtful finger under her chin. “ _Don’t believe in yourself, don’t deceive with belief._ I would credit you the more nihilistic one of us.”

He laughed. “Dear me. I was reading a lot of Nietzsche at the time, so have a little mercy.”

“Mercy and me don’t go very well together. And it’s still discernible in your latest. I mean, really – _Time_?”

“You were paying an awful lot of attention to the lyrics for a first time listener.”

She looked at their fingers, still laced together on the seat, and smiled. “I might have visited a record store or two yesterday.”

When she lifted her eyes back up, she was surprised to find that his face had taken on a very soft expression. “I’m flattered,” he gave back.

And then, just a second later: “We’re there.”

 

 

***

 

 

Entering Eden Club was like setting foot on a new planet. Or, well, maybe more like entering Versailles in the 1750s. Everything was doused in gold and glitter, even the waiters and waitresses who were carrying around glasses of champagne and small treats on golden tablets. Long, heavy brocade drapes decorated the windows, and somewhere a band was playing slow jazz music. Groups of people were standing together at every corner, all of them (the male attendants included) dressed in luxurious robes and expensive jewellery, their faces covered in thick make-up. Candles bathed the rooms in a warm glow, and it smelled distinctly like lavender and roses.

 

“It’s great, isn’t it?” he breathed into her ear, putting an arm around her waist.

“Like entering a different time stream,” she replied, and he chuckled.

“We won’t be staying too long. It can be rather – exhausting.”

She didn’t entirely get what he meant right away; but after roughly ten minutes she started to understand. There were so, so many people here – and all of them wanted to talk to him. Well, not only talk: She couldn’t help but notice that a lot of them were overly flirtatious toward him, to the point of making offers completely devoid of subtlety (most of them also directed toward her, by affiliation, which she found rather surprising and mildly amusing).

 

Someone handed them a glass of champagne each, and then another one, while he kept talking, and she kept observing the people he talked to, and how he talked to them. He never fended anyone’s affections off; to the contrary: He hugged them, kissed them on the mouth, and gave back the same suggestive comments they were directing towards him. But all the while he never completely let go of her, kept her by his side with an arm around her shoulder, a hand on her back, or his fingers absentmindedly stroking her forearm. After maybe two hours he turned to her, smiling. “I think that’s quite enough of this. Let’s get out of here.” She nodded, putting her empty glass on a tray that was conveniently being walked by, and followed him out into the night.

 

“Are they always like that?”, she asked, amusement in her voice.

“Chatty? Glamourous? Drunk?”  
“Crazy about you,” she corrected. “You could just pick and choose, if you wanted.”

He grinned in a particularly enticing way. “I didn’t.”

“Obviously. Since you were not taking anyone up on anything,” she said, smiling.

His thumb touched her lips then, without warning, and began to skirt along their outlines; while his gaze seemed completely lost in the movement.

Her smile deepened at the caress.

“Come home with me?” he asked, suddenly, glancing up into her eyes; and her heart started beating at least twice as fast as it had already been. She’d assumed this question would come, and she’d known her answer to it ever since she had entered his dressing room this evening. Maybe even since before then.

“All yours,” she gave back, quietly, and he smiled at her.

“Well then,” he said, and waved a cab.

 

 

***

Sitting next to him in the back of the cab felt a lot more intimate than sitting next to him in the back of his limousine a few hours before. The knowledge about their joint destination elicited a powerful tingle in her abdominal region, and it seemed to her that the way in which he was touching her now was more elaborate and poignant than earlier. On the drive to Eden Club he’d done nothing more than lightly hold her hand, whereas now his arm was draped over her shoulder, his fingers drawing invisible patterns on the skin there, while his other hand rested on her thigh, his thumb slowly stroking up and down on the shiny material of her dress. His warmth was bleeding through the fabric, and she knew that he had to be able to sense her alleviated heart rate and racing breath. He smelled like compact powder, champagne and something pleasantly tangy.

 

“Your hands are beautiful,” she said, because it was the first thing that sprang to mind, and it had the advantage of being completely true. She took the hand he had placed on her thigh, and looked at it, caressing it, and pressing a kiss on its knuckles; which prompted the hand to develop a life of its own by touching her cheek and turning her head so she was facing its owner, who was smiling at her rather wickedly.

“They can do an awful lot of things, too.”

Her heart jumped up into her throat at that, which made it hard to reply. “I figured as much,” she managed. “I’ve seen you with the lip gloss. You’re a menace.”

“You should have witnessed me with the eyeliner.”

“I would have fainted, for sure. A girl can only take so much.”

He laughed, brightly. “How are you holding up after Eden then?”

“Barely,” she said, which was hardly a lie. The alcohol had softened her thoughts, and his continued proximity was going to cause her a heart attack sooner or later.

“That bad?”

“That good.”

“Would you have liked to stay longer?”

“No,” she gave back, and this time it was _her_ hand against his face, moving along the rouge-painted outlines of his cheekbone. “Though I appreciated the numerous invitations for immodesty, I’d rather not share tonight.”

He chuckled. “You’re not a very upstanding Christian, my dear.”

“If you wanted to make an upstanding Christian out of me, you’d have to marry me on the spot, and even then we might get into trouble.”

“For a kiss?” he asked, catching her hand in his by interlacing their fingers. “How rude.”

“Maybe it has more to do with,” she made a conspiratorial pause, “Sex.”

The shocked expression on his face was slightly ruined by his obvious efforts not to laugh. “And yet you’re not even a man,” he countered.

“Sorry to disappoint,” she said, casting down her eyes in pretended humility.

“I’m glad to say that I don’t discriminate. It’s a very socially compatible approach.”

This in turn prompted her to laugh out loud. “Oh, well played. Not bad at all.”

 

A moment passed, in which she was just looking at him, at his lips, curled up ever so slightly, at his eyes, still sparkling with silent laughter, at their fingers, linked together, and she found it impossible not to kiss him right then, so she did.

His mouth was pliant beneath hers and still tasted a little bit like the gloss he had put on earlier when she licked along the inner seam of his lower lip to chase the last remnants of champagne. His hand let go of hers to stroke the side of her face, while his other arm pulled her closer into the embrace; and her fingers tangled with the smooth hair falling down the nape of his neck. The warm feeling in her gut started spreading beneath her skin, until it was everywhere, and she half-expected to spontaneously catch on fire as their kiss deepened. Just when she sensed the first gentle touch of his tongue against hers, the taxi came to a grinding halt in front of the hotel.

She let go of him, reluctantly, and allowed her eyes to dart down to his lips for an instant. They were, indeed, the perfect shade.

 

He paid their driver and slipped out of the car to open the door for her.

“Join me?”, he asked, offering her a hand.

“Gladly.”

 

 

***

 

 

They spent their way to his room holding hands in companionable silence, and she was, once more, surprised at how comfortable she felt. Excited – incredibly so, her heart was more or less struggling to get free from her ribcage at this point – and expectant, yes, but not…doubtful, or worried, or any such thing. And she suspected that the way he was touching her had a lot to do with that: Enough to make it clear that they both wanted the same thing. Never so much as to make her feel trapped.

 

He held the door to his room open for her – and she wasn’t really surprised to step into a spacious suite with all conceivable accommodations, and then some: A lush blue carpet, a telephone, a TV, a record player, a massive wooden table with a bottle of wine in a cooler on it, an enormous marble bathroom with a shower _and_ a tub, bouquets of flowers on several side tables, a _chandelier_ of all things and a bed that was big enough for five of him (given his acquaintances at Eden Club, though, he was probably one of the few people who actually needed it in that size). Unlike the dressing room, the suite was not submerged in chaos – she reckoned that this was in no small part due to the excellent maid service hotels like this usually provided.

 

“Would you like something to eat?” he asked, after he’d given her a few minutes to come to terms with his living arrangements. “Or anything else? Champagne? A cigarette?”

She smiled at him over her shoulder, curiously stroking the velvety blue covering of a tremendously huge wingback chair. “How about some music?”

“Nothing easier than that.” He stepped up to the record player and got it going. A few seconds later the guitar riff of _Jean Genie_ sounded through the room.

“I’m sorry, I don’t have anything else here at the moment. It’s awfully narcissistic.”

“Shame on you,” she replied, laughter in her voice. “But it’s a very good album, I’ll give you that.”

“It is,” he agreed.

“Not my favourite though.”

He shot her an interested look. “Which one is?”

“ _Ziggy Stardust.”_

“Not easy to follow up on, that one. It might be my best.”

“And yet I don’t feel like it’s the best you’ll ever do,” she retorted.

“What makes you believe that?”

“Watching you. The way you conquer a room. You have a lot more to do and to be, and you know it. Everyone knows it.”

He looked at her with an expression she found difficult to interpret. “I want to do Orwell’s _1984_ as a musical,” he stated, completely out of nowhere. “Started working on it, actually. The material is quite dark, and very demanding, not exactly made for a rock record, and not exactly fit for a stage show, either. What do you think?”

_What do you think?_ That wasn’t an easy question to answer – the concept he had laid out in front of her was abstract at best, and she was neither a manager nor a producer with a substantiated opinion on the subject of rock albums.

“I think you should get a good lawyer, secure the rights and pull it off,” she finally gave back, with all the conviction and honesty of the hopeless amateur she was. “Better risk it going south than not try at all, if it’s a project you care for.”

A smile started spreading on his face. “That’s what Mick keeps telling me. And in exactly the same tone of voice, too.”

“Well, he’s right then. You know what you’re doing.”

 

His eyes were gleaming black and blue in the dimmed down light of the chandelier, and her breathing started to speed up again, as her thoughts returned to the purpose of her visit here, while the last chords of _Jean Genie_ faded into nothing. There was a pause that made her heart stutter, and then a new, slower song began, heavy on the piano, with a viscous character to it that evoked images of tangled limbs and bodies moving into each other. She recognised the shift in the atmosphere, from one second to the next, like earlier in the dressing room, when he had made her choose the colour of his lips.

 

“You didn’t play that tonight,” she noted, unable to take her eyes off him in the half-light.

“I always thought that it’s one of those songs,” he replied, slowly walking towards her, “Best enjoyed in private.” Close enough by then, he stretched out his arm to brush along her side, before looping it around her waist and slowly pulling her in, until she was pressed against him chest to hip, his lips only a breath away from hers, warmth and the promise of pleasure in his eyes.

“I need to know,” he said, a soft undercurrent in his voice, “that I’m not doing anything you don’t want me to do. Tell me no, and I’ll stop. Alright?”

 

Her answer consisted in kissing him, which was a lot more convincing than a simple _okay_ , she reckoned, and she felt his lips curve into a smile, before he opened them to let her in. His fingers were dancing across her back, where they found the zipper of her dress, pulling it down in one swift go, and slipping inside to touch skin, leaving lines of prickling sensation behind on their way, like sparkling wine. The music welled up in the background, and his mouth left hers, only to start drifting hotly down her neck, over her shoulder, along her clavicle; prompting her hands to bury themselves in his hair, as he pulled down her dress, leaving her in her underwear and shoes. She had the presence of mind to toe out of them and kick them aside, plush carpet beneath her feet, while he was busy opening the fastener on her bra, his mouth drawing elaborate circles on the nape of her neck.

 

_And when the clothes are strewn_ , his voice sang on the record, entering her consciousness for an instant, and she smiled at the accuracy, as he stripped her of her bra. The only piece of clothing remaining on her then was a very flimsy pair of lace panties that she decided to make short work of, pulling them down and off, while he stepped away for a moment to get rid of his own clothing. When she finally found herself completely naked, he had already removed his shirt and boots, struggling with the buttons on his skin-tight trousers. She stepped in to lend a hand, but the buttons were quite stubborn, and a huff escaped her throat. “They should start selling those as chastity belts,” she said, and he guffawed.

“That’s exactly what it said on the tin when I bought them: _Protect the goods._ ”

She cracked up. “You’re outrageous.”

“And you’re beautiful,” he retorted, laughter fading into a smile, and then the buttons gave up, the trousers surrendered and they were kissing again, no more textile barriers between them, heated skin on heated skin, and she felt like bursting open, like bleeding laughter and love until she’d run dry and leave her dying breath with him in this room.

 

Somehow, they made it to the bed, tangled up in each other as they were; and she didn’t know how she’d ever get enough of his hands exploring the curves of her hips, or of his mouth breathing hot into hers, but she was forced to give him a little space for a second in order not to land them both head first on the floor, when he climbed the mattress in a complicated backwards manoeuvre, which, in turn, gave her the opportunity to really _look_ at him for a moment: His thin frame and the pale skin stood in stark contrast to the deep red of his dishevelled hair, sticking from his head in all possible directions, and the dark intensity of his eyes, highlighted by long lashes and the sharp edges of his cheekbones. She took in the bruised red colour of his lips, and a surge of pure, insatiable want spiked up in her veins, obliterating all remnants of restraint in such an efficient way, that she could hardly blink, before she had climbed the bed herself and taken his mouth, claiming it with her tongue and teeth. He chuckled softly under the onslaught, before returning the kiss with equal fervour, his surprisingly strong arms pulling her down with him; and then he was over her, strikingly elegant in his movements, as he lightly touched her breast, then her belly, then her thighs with his hands and mouth, teasing, testing, always skirting around the place she wanted to be touched most; and she felt close to dying of frustration, when he grinned up at her as if butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.

 

“Glad you’re enjoying yourself,” she brought out, hardly biting back a moan.

“Well, I am,” he retorted, with complete calmness. She might have bought it, hadn’t it been for the black width of his pupils only leaving a thin ring of blue in his eyes, that told her exactly how very turned on he was. “Are you?”

His index finger had slowly started to circle a spot right between the upper end of her thigh and her hipbone. He was still grinning innocuously.

“Well, since you’re asking, I’d be enjoying myself even more, if…”

“Yes?” The grin broadened.

“If you focused your attention on a specific part of my anatomy. You can’t miss it. It’s right in front of you.”

“What, this?” For the fraction of a second, she felt his fingers in exactly the right place – and this time she couldn’t help but moan, as a wave of pleasure crashed into her body.

She groaned in frustration, when the fingers disappeared right away, looking down at him with a scowl, whereby she noticed, not entirely without smugness, that the grin had disappeared from his face, and his calm composure was decidedly slipping. Yet a sudden, fierce rush of fondness for this impossible, gorgeous man vastly outweighed the complacency. “I will end you,” she said, her voice way too soft to put any bite into the words. She was surprised to see him smile at her, gently.

“You actually might.”

 

And then his mouth was where she needed it to be, kissing and sucking relief, and all she could do was get a grip on the bed sheets and hold on for dear life, as she felt familiar pleasure build at the base of her spine for an excruciating minute, before it erupted in jolts of electricity all over her body, immersing her in white, shapeless bliss – prolonged by two fingers entering her at just the right moment, and setting up a rhythm with the tails of her orgasm.

 

“ _Thank_ you,” she managed, fighting for air and coherence, as the fingers left. Her hand found the nape of his neck, and she urged him back up, towards her, so she could kiss the taste of herself from his lips, while she wrapped a leg around his back, and, without knowing that she had meant to do it in the first place, flipped them both over, so she found herself on top. Sitting up, breathless, she looked down into his mildly surprised features, and considered exacting revenge by making him wait for a moment, but she found that she really didn’t have the patience to do so at this point.

 

The confident grip of her hand on bloodhard flesh elicited a soft noise from his throat, and then she was sinking down on him, until he was buried inside her as deep as he would go. She kept looking at his face all the while, watching the instinctive closing of his eyes, the wordless parting of his lips, and committed it all to memory, as she let her hand glide over the smooth pale skin of his chest, up his neck, until her fingertips rested against his jaw. She circled her hips experimentally, getting used to the feeling of fullness, the movement awarding her a sharp intake of breath from him, before she started to set up a slow rhythm.

 

Ten seconds later his eyes opened again, and she felt close to breathing her last right then and there, just from the way he was looking at her, deeply aroused and terrifyingly focused at the same time, as he put his hands on her waist, steadying her. “Kiss me,” he asked, and she bowed down to do so – when suddenly she found herself flipped on her back again. She meant to comment on the deceitfulness of such methods, and his lack in manners, but he kissed her deeply, driving into her more forcefully now; and she couldn’t hold on to her thoughts, because a second orgasm took her completely by surprise. Even though she was hardly in her senses, she forced herself to break away from his mouth and open her eyes, because he couldn’t be too far behind – and she was right: He came just a few seconds later, a moan falling quietly from his lips, his eyes closed in absolute bliss, and she’d never had a religious experience in her life, but watching him like this was probably the closest she would ever get. When he looked at her again, his gaze still clouded in pleasure, she could hardly suppress a shudder.

 

Wordlessly he caressed her cheek, before kissing her once more, in a way that left her feeling like she might grow wings any moment. Then he moved away, softly leaving her body and her field of vision. She, on the other hand, didn’t feel capable of moving at all. Her muscles seemed to be made out of goo, and she didn’t dare lift a finger for fear of dissolving into the bed as soon as she’d try. After a while the muffled sound of music started filtering down through the haziness of her cotton wool packed brain, and somehow she identified it as the beginning of _Time._ She smiled at the thought of their conversation in the limousine, an eternity ago, when the warm, wet touch of a washcloth on her inner thigh pulled her out of her cogitations.

 

“Sorry, should have given you a heads up,” he apologised, cleaning her up with the cloth, while she managed to lift her torso by shifting its weight onto her elbows. The gooeyness in her limbs was still there, but her higher centres of consciousness slowly reconciled themselves with the idea of having a physical body attached to them. Looking down, she found him smiling at her, and smiled back.

“How are you doing?”, he asked.

“Barely escaped death. Twice.”

His smile deepened. “Good to see you alive and well, then.”

Another odd wave of fondness overtook her. “And how are _you_ doing?” she returned the question.

 

Done with the washcloth, he carelessly tossed it over the edge of the bed, and crawled up to lay himself down next to her on his side, facing her, with his head resting in his hand, a curious expression in his eyes. Apart from the ruined state of his lips, and a small smudge of eyeliner on his cheek, his make-up was still intact, which bordered on a miracle. He took her hand in his, to put it right over his sternum, her fingers curling into the hollow of his throat. She could feel his pulse flutter at breakneck speed against her fingertips. “Not any better”, he gave his delayed answer; and her heart rate accelerated again, like it needed to keep up.

 

They stayed silent, tracing the other’s face with their eyes, respectively.

“Has anyone ever died from you?” she finally said, only half joking.

“Not that I know of,” he retorted, a self-conscious smile on his lips. “But then, most of the times it’s just fun, everybody gets something out of it, and that’s that. The near-death experiences are few and far between.”

She blinked, trying to process what he had just said, as his free hand reached over to touch the side of her face. “Does that surprise you?” he asked, very softly, as if not to spook her.

“Yes,” she admitted; a chaos of thoughts tumbling over and into each other in her head. “Yes, it does.” Her mouth felt very dry all of a sudden, when she dared ask: “What do you do in such cases?”

 

He thoroughly examined her expression for a few seconds.

“You ask them to stay a while,” he responded in the end, stroking her cheek. “Are you staying?” She could only nod, unable to speak; and watched a sincerely delighted smile spread all over his face, accompanied by a touch of his thumb to her lower lip.

“Would you care for some booze? And a cigarette?” he added, conversationally.

“It really can’t hurt, can it?” she gave back, and he got up, laughing.

 

This time her eyes followed him through the room, still trying to root him and all he encompassed in the reality of her world, and still failing. It seemed to her as though she had been thrown into a parallel universe since yesterday, something coexisting, but never meshing with the normalcy she was used to. And now he had invited her to stay just a little longer… She decided, with surprising boldness, that her efforts to extract sense from her situation were completely pointless. They didn’t change anything, not even in the slightest. All she needed to know was that she was staying, here, with him, for as long as he wanted her to. And that was the end of it.


	2. 1976 - "Oh sweet name, I call you again..."

She put down the eyeliner and inspected the result in the mirror – not her best ever work, but not too shabby either. Good enough, anyway. Her gaze wandered over to the extensive collection of lipsticks and glosses carefully lined up on the dressing table, and she pondered which colour to put on tonight.

 

Cherry red was always a good choice, but then, it didn’t fit with her eye shadow.

Brown, maybe? Pink?

 

_Just the perfect shade._

The thought struck her completely out of the blue, wrapped into the warm sound of his voice, and she paused. She hadn’t thought about him an awful lot lately, hadn’t thought about her two and a half weeks in his world nearly three years ago, hadn’t thought about leaving his hotel room for the last time, when he had announced his imminent trip to L.A. over breakfast, hadn’t thought about how she would never meet him again. _Nothing is permanent,_ he’d told her once, when they’d lain next to each other in bed, talking, his fingers drawing invisible lines of text on her skin. _But fleetingness makes everything more beautiful, don’t you think?_

 

In retrospect, she agreed. She cherished the memories of him that sometimes felt more like remnants of a dream than something she had actually been part of in reality; and she was glad that no fight, no breakup, no rejection had ever tainted them – for the time being it had been good, and it would forever stay like that: Good.

 

But then, despite better knowledge, she’d still found herself thinking about what might have been, if circumstances had been different; and even though she could have punched herself for envisioning such scenarios, her mind had circled them again and again over the years.

 

She’d kept track of him in real life, too, had bought his albums and listened to live broadcasts of his concerts, had taken note of the way he and his music had changed, had even adapted a few of his songs for her own repertoire, because – well, for what reason, really? Maybe she did have a problem with truly letting go of the whole affair, after all. Maybe she would never get over it for the rest of her life. Those were some scary thoughts, but it had been three years, and she was still thinking about him more than she should. Less than in the beginning, sure, but more than was probably normal for a two-week-fling. Yet, the whole thing with him wasn’t normal, it had never been, and if she’d never get over it, then, well, _suck it up and deal with the consequences of your decisions_.

 

A knock sounded on the door, and the voice of the stage assistant said: “Five minutes” on the other side, which prompted her to snap out of her thoughts, and swiftly pick a berry-coloured lipstick from her collection that fit with her eyes and with the elegance of the establishment. Rising to her feet, she surveyed her reflected form in the black cocktail dress one more time, before turning away, grabbing her favourite pair of inhumanely high-heeled shoes and leaving the dressing room.

 

 

***

 

“My last song tonight was written by a very special artist I was lucky enough to meet in person a few years ago. It’s called _Word on a Wing_.” The few people forming her audience clapped, and she smiled at them. Her show had been going for an hour and a half; and since the club wasn’t exactly full on a weeknight like this one, she was not banking on an encore.

 

The piano behind her started playing the intro, and she gripped the microphone tighter. Singing his songs, specifically this one, always gave her a close to reverent feeling, usually accompanied by a small flow of scenes in her head, that she could, most of the time, barely believe she’d actually lived through.

 

 _In this age of grand illusion, you walked into my life out of my dreams,_ she began, and she already felt like being lifted to a different plane of existence after just the first line.

 

_Lord, I kneel and offer you my word on a wing._

_And I’m trying hard to fit among your scheme of things._

_It’s safer than a strange land, but I still care for myself._

She’d often mused about the lyrics, but she found that, as deeply personal as they were, it was very hard to really grasp their meaning. The better approach was to sing them, and let the atmosphere come in naturally, instead of analysing every single letter in an attempt to understand the words intellectually, which was nigh on impossible, and also completely beside the point with a song that had so much emotion in it.

 

_Lord, Lord, my prayer flies like a word on a wing._

_My prayer flies like a word on a wing._

Then, suddenly, it was over.

 

She took a bow, said “Thank you and good night”, the audience gave her a final round of applause (not enough for an encore, as expected), and off she went, backstage, where she leaned against a wall for a few moments, coming back to earth, and wondering whether she should be going to her dressing room to pack her things right away and leave, or have a drink at the bar before that. The prospect of something strong with ice in it was quite tempting, so the bar won out in the end, even though that meant she wasn’t going to get out of her shoes for another hour.

 

Slipping surreptitiously through the side of the curtain she made her way to the bar that stretched the opposite wall of the room. Her colleagues on stage were still playing, some smooth and slow swing music, and she was glad that she, unlike them, didn’t have to perform until the last guest left. “Could you make me something strong with ice?” she asked as soon as she reached her destination. The bartender, who had known her and her taste for more than a year now, nodded with a smile, and went to work.

 

She leaned back against the counter and let her gaze drift through the room. It was Thursday night, about 10.30 pm, and not a lot of the lush red chairs around the small, shiny black tables were occupied, when on weekends they hardly sufficed to accommodate half of the crowd. If the band got lucky, they’d have an early evening tonight.

 

“Hello,” a voice said, right next to her, ripping her violently out of her observations. Her head flew around, and even though she’d recognised the voice anywhere, immediately, she couldn’t believe herself until she saw.

 

He was looking at her with the hint of a smile, his gaze just as intense, but not quite as steady as she remembered; and she couldn’t help but notice how ashen his cheeks appeared in the light. His tousled hair was shorter and copper rather than red, there was no make-up on his face, and he was dressed in stylishly chequered suit trousers and an understated white long-sleeve shirt; but it was him, painfully, obviously him, his smile, his voice, his eyes. Before she could think about it, she’d wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a hug, breathing in the smell of cigarettes and aftershave that surrounded him like a cocoon, her cheek resting in the curve of his neck. After a few moments of stunned immobility, he reciprocated the embrace, cautiously at first, then with growing confidence, one of his hands against the back of her head, the other one on her shoulder blade, pulling her in. They stayed like that for quite some time, locked together, while she was trying to get the maelstrom of emotions wracking her body under control. In vain: When she finally found the strength to let go of him, it nearly physically hurt her.

 

“What are you doing here?” she asked the most urgent of a million very urgent questions whirling through her brain.

This time, he gave her a full smile that instantly made him look a lot less worn out. “I’d ask you the same question.”

“I work here. Have been, for 14 months. You?”

“Just passing through, actually. Someone told me they played sensible live music here, and I didn’t feel like partying with the rest of the entourage.” He bit his lip, looking her over. “Turns out, destiny is a funny old thing.”

 

Him taking up a glass of whiskey from the counter and sipping on it reminded her of her own freshly made drink standing neglected a little further down the bar. She grabbed it and took a long pull, welcoming the cool taste of bitter oranges and brandy burning down her throat. It didn’t exactly help sort out her thoughts, but the warmth it left behind in her belly steadied her a bit.

 

“You were singing my song,” he said, just as she was setting down the glass again.

“I was.”

“Why that one?” He seemed more than just a little interested in her answer, like it was a vital piece of information to him.

“It spoke to me,” she responded, honestly. “Even more than your previous work. Singing that song feels like being part of your thoughts for a while, time and time again.”

His features took on an odd expression. “They are not very good thoughts lately.”

“No,” she gave back, examining his face. “But they’re still yours. And I’m a hopeless case.”

He tried to smile, but there was something agonised and sad in his eyes, that she felt the deep, impossible need to soothe.

“How long are you staying?” she asked, softly.

“Until tomorrow.”    

“Hotel?”

He nodded.

“Is anyone with you?”

“No.”

Part of her wondered if what she was about to do was a good idea, but that part was neither very big, nor very insistent. “Would you like me to come with you, then?”

He looked at her, somewhat longingly. “I can’t ask you to.”

“You don’t have to. I’m offering. We could talk. Or not talk. Smoke, watch TV, order room service, scowl at each other. Like old times.”

He grinned, reflexively. “When did we ever scowl at each other?”

“I do recall some instances of you being a tease, me being frustrated, and you imitating my facial contortions. It was very amusing, and it did involve copious amounts of scowling. From both sides.”

The grin turned into laughter. “Oh, right. I remember.”

A few seconds later he added, more seriously: “We were good, weren’t we?”

She shook her head, a kind of warmth flooding her insides that had nothing to do with the brandy. “We were brilliant.”

 

 

***

 

“Are you working a day job, too?”

“Still studying, in my penultimate semester now. I’m just making some money on the side singing.”

“And what do you want to do when you’re finished?”

 

As soon as they had emptied their glasses, he’d gotten them a cab. She hadn’t lost a word about her stuff in the dressing room – she still had plenty of time to collect it tomorrow – and they’d barely sat down in the car, when he had started showering her with questions about her past, present and future. He had done that before, one afternoon three years ago over tea and cigarettes, when he’d asked her about her daily routines, her dreams, her hopes and everything and everyone she knew, eagerly absorbing even the smallest details. Now, in a sort of weird déjà-vu, he was doing it again, catching up on three years of her life as fast as he could, not even leaving her time to breathe, never mind asking questions of her own in the process.

 

“Be a writer. Of fiction, not fact books, though; I don’t want to bore myself to death.”

“Are you getting by?”

“Yes, I am.” She shot him a glance, only to discover that a worried expression had settled in his eyes. “Seriously, I am. My parents – the ones that died five years ago, if you still recall – they’ve left me a considerable amount. More than I can spend, actually. I wouldn’t even have to work in that nightclub if I didn’t want to. Really. I’m doing fine.”

 

The worry disappeared from his gaze, albeit slowly.

“What about your friends? You have friends, right?”

That made her laugh out loud. “Yes, I do have friends. Most of them are the same from three years ago, too. We do normal things. Go out, dance, watch movies, talk about boys.”

“Do they know about me?” he asked, no judgement in his voice, just interest.

She looked at him, a little surprised at the question. “No,” she answered, truthfully.

“Nobody wondered where you’d gone for two weeks straight, then?”

“Spontaneous holidays. Just needed to get out for some time. Couldn’t tell anyone in advance,” she gave back, a sly grin on her lips, and he chuckled.

“Because you didn’t think they’d believe you?”

“Because I didn’t want to tell them.”

 

The expression in his eyes had become very intent at that, but he kept from asking any further, and it felt like he wanted to give her the opportunity to elaborate. So she did.

“It just felt – wrong, to tell anyone. Telling would somehow have taken it away from me, changed it, until it would have been unrecognisable in somebody else’s head who didn’t understand it.” She paused. “That sounds very supercilious, doesn’t it? Like I’m the only one who could possibly grasp the concept of loving you.”

 

She hadn’t meant to say _loving._ Or, had she? It had come out, anyway, and she couldn’t take it back. Her pulse went up, while he was watching her, quietly, an impenetrable look on his face, as time passed them by ever so slowly.

“No,” he said, softly, about a millennium later. “Supercilious is not the right word.”

 

Before he could add anything else, the cab stopped at their destination, effectively cutting their conversation short.

 

 

***

 

It was not the same hotel, not even in the same part of the city, but the surroundings eerily set her mind back to the events from three years ago. She remembered the expectant, excited nervousness she had felt when he had taken her to his room for the first time, remembered the clothes he had been wearing, remembered holding his hand the whole way up in complete silence, all to a tee. Now, three years later, nothing had changed, and yet everything was different. They had _history._ Two and a half weeks of it. That, and radio silence for years. She had no idea how to take things up from there, no idea what she had gotten herself into. On the other hand, she found, with a certain, strange sense of relief: She didn’t need to know what this was all about. He was just passing through. Barely here for a night. There was nothing at stake. But at the same time, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this unlikely encounter _mattered_ in a lot of ways. Being in his company again had given her perspective, had forced her to gain a better look at her own feelings, lifting the veil of dream-like haziness that had been part of her memories of him right from the beginning.

 

He had changed over the last years, and even though she had recognised it the moment she’d laid eyes on him in the club, having been with him for nearly an hour made it even more obvious to her. His demeanour was toned down, not remotely as vivid and buoyant as she remembered, he was way too thin, and his eyes were flickering into a darker, haunted expression when he thought she wasn’t looking. She didn’t know what, or since when, but something had started eating at him a while ago, and it didn’t look like it was about to let go of its prey any time soon.

 

Yet, somehow, that didn’t stop her. It didn’t turn her thoughts away from how beautiful his smile was, his hands, the way he talked, didn’t stop her heart from speeding up when the draught allowed her to catch a notion of his scent, didn’t prevent a rush of warmth from spreading through her whole body when he opened the door to his room for her.

 

“Nice place,” she said, appreciatively, after he’d switched on the light, revealing a suite no less spacious and comfortable than the one she remembered.  
He sighed. “I suppose. But they look the same all over the world. Sometimes I wonder if I’m really only living in one hotel room that travels from one town to another.”

She looked at him, her eyebrows raised. “Sounds like a terrifying concept.”

“I told you. Not a lot of good thoughts, lately.” He took off his black dress shoes, throwing them into the next corner, and his suit jacket, that he more carefully folded over the armrest of a big, green couch, before he let himself fall down on it, kicking a few of the cushions to the floor in the process.

  
“Cigarette?” he asked, pulling out a small etui and a lighter from the breast pocket of his jacket on the armrest.

She stretched out her hand to take the smoke he was offering her, and let him give her fire, following his example and throwing her shoes to the side, glad to finally be rid of them, as she sat down on the sofa next to him.

“So, what have you been up to? Apart from pondering the travelling habits of your hotel rooms?” she asked, pulling on her cigarette.

“Writing songs, most of the time. Doing shows. TV. Parties. Rinse and repeat.”

“Dabbling in movies?”

He grinned around his cigarette. “You’ve seen it?”  
“Four times. Still don’t understand the gun scene.”

It took him a few moments, before he laughed, but when he did, it sounded full and honest. “I think they just really wanted me naked more than once.”

“Can’t blame them.”

“It would be terribly hypocritical of you to do so.”

She smiled, blowing out smoke. “I’ve missed this.”

“Smoking?”

“Smoking with you.”

The amusement disappeared from his expression, and she hated to see it.

“I’ve changed.”

“Smoking with you hasn’t.”

 

A minute passed, maybe two. She used the time to tap the ash off her cigarette into the crystal ashtray on the small coffee table before them, and watched him do the same with an elegant movement of his long, pale fingers.

“I’ve been using too much, I think,” he finally stated, to her surprise, cool resignation in his voice. “Missing days, sometimes. Don’t remember where I’ve been, or what song I’ve recorded an hour ago.”

She put her cigarette down, looking at him.

“Tried to go without it?”

He attempted a smile. “I don’t last a day. Not even twelve hours.”

“You want to stop?”

“Yes.”

“Then you need to get out,” she said, matter-of-factly.

He blinked at her. “How do you mean?”

“You took me to your friends’ parties, three years ago, and I don’t think they’re a lot different in L.A. If so, they’re probably worse. More booze, more drugs. You’re in a rats’ nest. If you want to stop, move. You won’t do it over there.”

 

The silence lasted longer this time, and she took her cigarette back up to draw on it once more, filling their shared wordlessness with smoke.

“Profound,“ he said, suddenly. “Not supercilious. Profound.”

She needed a moment to understand what he was referring to, and when she finally did, her heart skipped a beat. _It sounds very supercilious, doesn’t it? Like I’m the only one who could possibly grasp the concept of loving you._

Her fingers trembled as she stubbed out her cigarette in the tray.

He noticed.

“What is it?”

“Nothing,” she said, without looking at him.

“Alright.”

The tone of his voice made her head shoot up and her eyes search his face. It was overcast like the night sky outside, and she knew he’d gotten her wrong.

“I’m not put off by you, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she clarified.

His expression didn’t change, and she’d sworn never to say any of this to his face, but it was impossible not to, with that cold, desolate, hopeless thing in his eyes before her she would do anything to make disappear. “I just wish we’d had more time, back then. And it’s such an immoderate wish, because what was then, was good. It still is. Nothing ever ruined it. It’s whole, and perfect, in being finite as it was. Why would I want to change that?”

Slowly, the look in his eyes lost its coldness.

“Maybe I was wrong,” he finally responded, quietly. “About fleetingness.”

She sighed. “No, I think you were perfectly right.”  


His expression became softer, still, until it reminded her of the one he’d worn three years ago, when he had asked to take her to bed for the first time. “Then, maybe, I was wrong about everything else.” His thumb made contact with the corner of her eye, and that was when she noticed the teardrop there, precariously close to falling and wetting her cheek.

“I’m sorry,” she managed, whispering. “I’m not meaning to.”

A sad smile turned up the corners of his mouth, as he caught her tear with his finger. “We’re all just human, aren’t we?”

 

He kissed her on the lips, then, chastely, questioning, unleashing the already confounded jumble of emotion in her mind into absolute chaos. His mouth left, before she could do anything, and she found him glancing down at his hands when she opened her eyes, having shut them during the kiss, a reflex. Nobody said a word, while she kept looking at him, and he kept looking away, until something formed itself out of the havoc in her brain, something unhesitating enough to be a decision.

 

Gently, she touched the collar of his shirt; let her hand move up over his neck into his hair, caressing his jawline, his cheek, his temple on the way. He was still looking down, but his eyes had closed, and he wasn’t protesting what she was doing, so she kept going, her fingers drifting down to his clavicle, prominent under the pale skin, stroking over the tiny golden cross he was wearing around his neck, before reaching the buttons of his shirt, and opening them, one after the other.

 

His hand stopped hers when it had about arrived at the last button, carefully wrapping itself around her wrist. She gazed up into his face. His eyes were no longer closed, and they were looking at her in a strangely focused manner.

“Are you sure of that?” he asked. To her utter astonishment, there was something like unsteadiness in his usually so very level headed voice, when he added. “I’m a desperate man.”

“Yes. I’m sure,” she gave back, full of certainty. “But if you want me to stop, I....”

“No,” he interrupted her sentence, letting go of her wrist at the same time. The look in his eyes had grown darker, but it wasn’t the same kind of dark as earlier. There was something familiar in the way he was watching her now, something she recognised from afternoons spent at the mercy of his fingertips, that sparked an answering emotion in her stomach, as she opened the last button on his shirt with renewed confidence.

 

Finally pulling the fabric apart, her fingers started wandering again, rediscovering the flat plane of his belly, the edged outlines of his ribs, the angle of his breastbone, until they stopped at the hollow of his throat, curling in to feel his pulse. It was going at a fast pace, and speeding up even more at her touch. She smiled, allowing herself to sink into memories for a minute, before she got up, took her hand away, and sank down on her knees right between his spread legs in a single movement.

Just when she started tampering with the zipper on his fly, she heard him say “Don’t…”, very quietly. She dropped her task, instantly, to glance up at him; and he returned the worried look she gave him with soft insistence in his eyes. “Not like this. I want to see you.”

 

Her breath got stuck in her throat like a fly in a spider’s web, and she nodded, rising to her feet again. She removed her dress, then her undergarment, with hasty precision. A few seconds later she was climbing on top of him, where he’d unbuttoned, unzipped and stripped down his trousers as far as necessary; and then she was _there_ , again, her eyes fixed on his, three years falling to pieces around her, like they’d never happened at all.

 

His arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, until his forehead rested against hers, their breath mingling in an almost-kiss, and only then did she really get what he’d tried to tell her: _I’m a desperate man._ She knew him hungry, but this – this was him, starving. This was him, fighting for air. There was nothing playful, nothing mellow in the way he moved, only raw, painful emotion clawing its way out of him, and she wondered how he had survived for so long, with _that_ inside. Instinctually, her hand found his cheek, and when she kissed him, really kissed him, she made sure to do it slowly, gently, taking the roughness from his lips, until there was nothing left of it. He clung to her body, like it was physically impossible for him to let go, when she parted from his mouth to look at him; but he opened his eyes for her, and she drank them down, not a thought wasted on the possibility of drowning; before they closed again, when he came apart, staggering into a sudden, inevitable moment of bliss.

 

She kept a hand in his hair, watching, as his mouth slackened, and his head sank down on the backrest of the sofa, turning his neck into a long, pale arch. It still felt like witnessing something sacred, seeing him like that; and she resolved then, for herself, resting her cheek against his collarbone, that whatever the consequences of this, they would be worth it.

 

 

***

 

She woke up when it was still dark outside, half wrapped into the covers, half into an embrace. Turning her head, she found him next to her, asleep, his lashes throwing shadows on his cheeks in the tenuous light of the small lamp on the desk by the wall, that none of them had bothered to switch off before going to bed. From this perspective, and with indirect illumination, his features didn’t look gaunt at all, only relaxed and serene, and she could hardly stop herself from tracing them with her fingers, one more time.

 

After having climbed off of each other, and off the sofa, dishevelled as they’d been, he had lighted them another cigarette each, and then a few more. They had spent the first few minutes smoking in complete silence, before slowly entering back into conversation, talking about him, about her, about his albums, about her ideas for future stories, about God and about the world. During their dialogue they had held body contact, touches of her hand to his thigh, his fingers to her neck, her head to his shoulder. And, some time in between, she must have had fallen asleep right there, because he had awoken her with a kiss to her temple, and suggested she go to bed. To her surprise, he had followed his own advice as well, had taken off his remaining clothes, and lain down next to her on the gigantic hotel bed, his hand stroking her hair, as she had slipped into unconsciousness.

 

With effort, she tore herself away from the view, and the recollection of the evening. This was her chance to leave, to make it as easy as she possibly could for both of them, and she wouldn’t waste it. She’d thought about it, again and again, in the course of their conversation before, had thought about staying for breakfast, about offering to go with him; and she’d come to the same conclusion every time: She couldn’t make things better for him, in the long run, couldn’t _cure_ anything, could only thwart the bouts of loneliness for a short while. And that wasn’t enough. Not even close.

 

Tiptoeing through the room she collected her things, redressing in the process. She kept her eyes off his sleeping form on the bed, scared of potentially wrecking her steadfast intentions, now that she’d mustered up the strength to go through with them, if she looked at him again; and she was halfway to the door already, when her gaze stumbled across a stack of paper and a pencil on the desk with the burning lamp on it, like they had been put there just for her.

 

He needed time. But paper didn’t care. Paper was more patient than both of them. Her feet carried her over, and she bowed down, taking up the pencil, and letting a small note flow from the lead.

 

 

_You’ve written many songs about time, and all of them are so deeply knowledgeable that I will not be able to say anything any better than you already have. But I also don’t want to quote your own lyrics back at you (you’d laugh at me if I did), so I’ll have to try and phrase things myself, nevertheless:_ _Time. It’s something you need, and it’s also the only thing I can really give you right now. Use it. Take it. Make it yours. There were good things in the past, just as there will be good things in the future, and you will be part of them. Don’t lose hope in yourself._ _As for me: Leaving you shouldn’t feel like a novelty. Still, it does. And still, it hurts. But you don’t need me, like you need time, and it’s fine, it is. Stop glowering. I mean it._ _Despite that, and because I’m a hopeless case, I’ll leave you my address. Whenever you’re ready, when you’ve taken all the time you need, three years, five years, twenty, one hundred – write me._

_I kiss you goodbye. Until then…_

She put her full name and address beneath the text, and left the hotel room, softly closing the door behind her without looking back.


	3. 1978 - "Though nothing, nothing will keep us together..."

When she unlocked the door to her flat, she couldn’t suppress an exhausted sigh. Fourteen hours of organising, running around, reading to a room full of critics, running around again, having a chat with her publisher, signing books, and doing a photo shoot, all of that in high heels that harboured murderous intentions towards her feet, had left her completely knackered. She’d barely had time to eat, never mind take a minute off; and the fact that her last few weeks had consisted of equally crazy days didn’t really help. A profound tiredness had settled deep in her bones, and she knew that she desperately needed a good night’s sleep, and at least three days off. But none of the sort was going to happen in the near future. There was at least one more week of _that_ in front of her, and she already dreaded the next morning.

 

“Shut up, girl, and count your blessings,” she brought herself back to her senses as she stripped off her shoes, a soft groan escaping her throat, when her tortured toes finally got free. Barefoot she walked through her apartment, switching on the lights, and stopping in front of the dining table, where she’d stacked the unopened mail she had received in the last three days. The growing pile reminded her of all the work she hadn’t done yet; and with a short glance in the direction of the kitchen clock (it was 10 pm and a bit) she decided to give in to her bad conscience, and get it over with, right now. But first – tea.

 

Ten minutes later and a steaming cup of Earl Grey in front of her she started to sort through the letters. She was lucky, anyway – a lot of the paperwork concerning her debut as an author, as well as the considerable amount of fan mail she got on a daily basis, didn’t go to her private address, but to a postal box near her publisher’s office; so this was really not as bad as it could be. Still, the paper-warfare was impressive: Bills, letters from the HMRC, junk mail, two postcards from her friends (that she actually enjoyed reading) and, last but not least, a rather mysterious, rather thick letter with a foreign postmark on it. She blinked in surprise, and surveyed it a little closer. The postmark was German. From Berlin, to be precise.

 

With furrowed brows she took up the paperknife and opened the envelope. The first thing she pulled out of it was a page of hideous red plotting paper, scrawled on in no less hideous handwriting. When she started reading, she forgot to breathe for a few moments.

 

_Upon our last meeting you left me your address, among other helpful things, – and hoping that you haven’t moved elsewhere in the meantime, I’m writing to you now. As you might have heard, I’m making my living in a grey, brooding monster of a city called Berlin for a while. The atmosphere of this place is tremendously depressing (the walls seem to be moving inward) but some of the stuff I’ve recorded here is quite good, despite the surroundings – or because of them. Knowing me, probably the latter._ _Overall, time has been kind to me, since you’ve delivered me into its capable hands, allowing me to get my daft old self together in this town. Which is why I feel this might be the right moment to inflict myself on you. I’d very much like to meet you again. I know, it’s been a while, and I’m not sure, if you want to see me, after witnessing my distress two years ago. But then, I shouldn’t lose hope, as you so prudently argued; and therefore you’ll find, attached to this terrifying red-squared testimony of German engineering I’m writing on, a concert ticket and a backstage pass for my next show in England, two weeks from now. Maybe you’ll have time for me then, despite the busy schedule that comes with publishing a bestseller. (I’ve read the book, by the way. Couldn’t put it down.)_

_I’ll be waiting for you._

 

 

She read the whole thing again, because she couldn’t believe her eyes. And then two more times, to thoroughly analyse the words; before she took the envelope back up, withdrawing the rest of its contents. There – the ticket for the show, 1st of July, Earl’s Court. A backstage pass with her name on it. And one more thing he hadn’t mentioned in his letter at all: Another two pages of the terrible red graph paper, written on in the same scrawly longhand. It took her a few seconds to identify the words on them as song lyrics, partially crossed out and corrected over.

 

_I, I will be king. And you, you will be queen._

_Though nothing will drive them away_

_We can beat them, just for one day_

_We can be heroes, just for one day_

 

She couldn’t read on, because her gaze had become obfuscated; and then tears started streaming down her face. For twenty minutes she sat, crying and smiling at the same time, the text still in her hands, while her tea cooled down next to her on the table, her heart welling over just like her eyes.

 

 

***

 

Earl’s Court on the 1st of July was chock full of people, brimming with nervous energy, and she really wouldn’t have expected anything different. The kind of eager nervousness the crowd was giving off was not unfamiliar to her at all, since she’d spent the last few days in a very similar state of tense anticipation for tonight, made worse by the fact that she couldn’t really tell people what exactly she was tense about. The things she’d said to him back then, when he had asked her about the level of knowledge her acquaintances possessed about their relationship, still completely applied. Therefore, she hadn’t inaugurated even her closest friends, who had been justifiably confused about her recent behaviour. But none of them had gotten a satisfying explanation out of her, though some of them had gone to great lengths in investigating her strange conduct. In the end, all of them had given up on their cause with varying levels of annoyance.

 

As for annoyance: Her publisher had been considerably annoyed, too, when she had informed him about her night-long unavailability (Not within reach at all? No. Not even via telephone? No.), but he’d had to accept her deliberately vague excuse in the end. Most of the remaining promotion work for her novel had been done, and before she’d really get started on writing her second book (something a lot of people were already pushing quite insistently), there were some vastly more important things for her to do. Like be here, tonight.

 

Worming her way through the crowd she found a place close enough to the stage, just in time before the lights went off. Deafening applause surged up in the hall, when the main attraction entered the boards only a minute later, dressed in a white shirt and ample trousers; and her heart doubled its pace at the view. Even from afar she could tell that he’d put some direly needed weight on, and the smile he sent into the audience was real and open. _He’s doing better,_ was her last coherent thought; then he opened his mouth to sing the first few lines of _TVC-15_ , and she got carried away, lost in the sound of his voice, her lips moving along to the lyrics without her doing.

 

She didn’t know how long his performance really went on for – and she hardly remembered leaving the theatre with the rest of the concertgoers to make her way to the back door later. The fog around her consciousness lifted only thanks to the adrenaline creeping up through her insides, after she’d been waved through, envious looks boring into her back, and had begun to slowly make her way to where she assumed his dressing room to be. More than one wrong turn, and two helpful stage assistants later, the right door finally lay in front of her.

 

She breathed in deeply once more, squaring her shoulders. Then, she knocked.

“Come on in.” His voice. Hesitantly pressing down the door handle, she entered, her heart beating riot in her ribcage.

 

The first thing she noticed was the chaos, that seemed to be a staple for his dressing rooms – how could one have so much _stuff_ lying around? Sheets of paper, clothes, cans, boxes, bottles, packets of cigarettes… She didn’t get the chance to spot anything else, because she was being pulled into a vigorous embrace that nearly lifted her off her feet. Her senses registered warmth, cigarette smoke, the smell of powder, hair products and aftershave; and it was a piece of work to keep breathing, when she reciprocated with equal enthusiasm, pressing herself up against the sinewy frame of his body, her hands grabbing hold of his shirt. “You’re here,” he murmured against her ear, after about a minute of hugging, like he still couldn’t believe it; and she pulled herself out of his arms enough to give him the once-over.

 

“You look fantastic,” she said, a comically big smile on her face; and he gave a self-conscious laugh. She hadn’t lied, though: He did, in fact, look absolutely marvellous; shockingly normal with his rather short, natural coloured hair, the casually chic jeans-and-shirt-ensemble he’d changed into, and only a bare minimum of make-up on his face. His eyes were sparkling, and she noticed the renowned liveliness in them she’d been missing so desperately two years ago.

 

“Right back at you. Love the dress,” he returned the compliment.

She smiled. “Love the everything.”

“I hope you know you’re really stroking my ego here,” he gave back, raising his eyebrows in amusement.

“Since I’ve been stroking many parts of you in my life, that doesn’t concern me at all.”

The corners of his mouth twitched.

“Naughty.”

“You like it.”

“Indeed,” he retorted, with a full on laugh. “Dinner? I’m starving. And I don’t want another press team to invade my dressing room before getting something between my teeth, for their sake. I’ll invite you, even.”

She pulled a playfully affronted face. “As the international bestseller author I have become, I’m very capable of paying for dinner myself. But since it’s you,” She sighed in pretended resignation. “I’ll temper justice with mercy and let you spend money on me tonight.”

“From the kindness of your heart,” he added, an affectionate grin on his lips. “That’s too generous.”

“I know.”

 

Still grinning at her, he elegantly offered his hand, and she took it, a lightness flooding her body that she hadn’t quite felt in anyone’s company for five whole years. But there it was, like it had never been gone, spurring her steps and putting a smile on her lips, as they left the theatre hand in hand.

 

***

 

They took their dinner in a small, unimposing Italian restaurant close to the city centre he had recommended with the unbeatable assertion that nobody would disturb them there and that the food was very good. Both of his claims turned out to be accurate, to their shared delight, even though she, at least, couldn’t really focus on the quality of her dishes. She was too busy taking in the sight of him, while they talked about Berlin, politics, managers (and their ludicrous demands), publishers (and _their_ ludicrous demands), book signings, the press, and so on and so on.

 

“Dessert?” he asked, after the non-existent leftovers of their main courses had been cleared from the table. She smiled at him, a knee-jerk reaction, like her face wasn’t capable of doing anything else in his presence tonight, and tilted her head.

“Move that elsewhere, if it’s the same for you? My kitchen counters don’t offer the perfect _panna cotta_ they undoubtedly make here, but I hope that won’t stop you from coming along.”

He blinked, and she noticed a touch of surprise in his eyes. “To your kitchen?”

“To my flat,” she clarified. “Where the kitchen is located. I have tea, as well, so don’t worry.”

“Well,” he said, returning her smile. “If you have tea – what’s keeping us?”

“The bill,” she chuckled, and a laugh escaped him.

“Always such nuisances.”

“Always.”

 

He paid, as per his wish, shooting her hand that jerked into the direction of her wallet for a second a warning look; and they climbed into the next cab, finding themselves right in front of her apartment building barely fifteen minutes later.

“This is it,” she invited him in, when they’d finally made it upstairs, opening the door for him and switching on the light in the hallway, glad that she’d been quick-thinking enough this morning to clean up at least the most glaringly messy parts of her premises. “Make yourself at home.”

 

He took off his shoes and leather jacket, and followed her soft-footedly into the kitchen, his hands occasionally touching a side table or a wall on the way. “That’s a lovely apartment,” he said, after a while.

“Thank you. Sorry for not cleaning up properly beforehand, though. Tea?”

“With pleasure. And if this counts as _not cleaned up_ , I can never invite you back in my dressing room again. Would you mind me looking around a little?”

“Not at all. Knock yourself out.”

 

She heard him wander off in the direction of her living room, while she put the kettle on. _What now?_ A voice nagged in the back of her head, but she sidelined it with a harsh _See what happens._ The water started boiling, a few impatient minutes later, and she poured them a cup of tea each, balancing the swashing hot fluid over into the next room.

“You have almost all of them,” he said, when she entered the living room. He was standing in front of her record player, browsing her vinyl collection, a copy of _Diamond Dogs_ under his scrutiny. She grinned and put the cups down on the coffee table.

“You caught me. Stalking your creative endeavours is a great hobby of mine.”

He smiled at her over his shoulder. “Speaking of stalking; I’ve already taken a look at your library, too.”  
“Cutting right to the chase, then.”

“You do learn an awful lot about someone when you know what books they’ve read.”

“You learn even more when you know which of them they actually enjoyed reading.”

“I agree. So, what is your favourite?” He was still flicking through her records.

“Book or album?”

“Book.”

“Oh, don’t make me decide. It always feels like I’m choosing between my children, when I need to answer this question,” she gave back. “I’m terribly fussy when it comes to the reading matter surrounding me, and I solely own books that I liked reading. The rest go to my friends, to charity or in extreme cases, right in the bin. But I’ll tell you that I enjoy Oscar Wilde and J.R.R. Tolkien a lot more than I probably should, and that I have a fatal weakness for mediocre adventure novels.”

She took up one of the cups to sip on it and nearly scalded her tongue.

“Does that no-favourite-policy also go for your music?” he wanted to know, as she put her tea back down.

“No. I do have favourite albums; but mostly, I have favourite songs.”

“Tell me about them.”

 

Only at this point she really noticed that he was doing it again, like it was a habit he couldn’t drop: Flipping through the last years of her life, catching up on her taste, soaking in details to file them in his brain for later use – but now he had a lot more illustrative material. She thought about calling him out on it, but didn’t, in the end; instead she fulfilled his wish, supplying him with a list of her recent favourites, leaving out _his_ songs, very much on purpose. He knew she enjoyed them (even without the proof right in front of him, in the form of no less than ten of his albums) but she wanted to know if he’d bother to ask.

 

“…and then I really enjoyed _Bohemian Rhapsody,_ too. The band is called _Queen_ , they were on the radio with their latest a lot last year. Their frontman is quite the musical genius, in my opinion. It’s on the record you’ve just – yeah, that one. _A Night At The Opera._ The rest of their stuff isn’t bad, either.”

 

“I’ve listened to them a while ago,” he said, turning the cover around in his hand. “Started with glam and made it out alive, which isn’t easy to do. And Mr. Mercury has a great voice, indeed.”

He put the album down and turned to her, a quizzical expression in his eyes, mixed with a small smile. “Any of mine?”

“No, I’ve got ten of yours standing around just to look at them,” she said, lifting her eyebrows, and trying hard not to laugh.

“You just wanted me to ask, didn’t you?” he retorted with a soft smile.

“I wanted you to admit your curiosity on the subject.”

“Well, there you go. I’m curious.”

For a moment she was just looking at him.

“When I listened to _Low_ for the first time,” she finally said, very seriously. “I couldn’t get _Sound and Vision_ out of my ears for ten days. My friends were on the verge of taping my mouth shut. I learned the lyrics to _Be My Wife_ in the course of half an hour, and started writing them down on my notepad from memory whenever I got bored.” She paused. “Nothing has ever made me feel as defiantly, devotedly alive as _Heroes._ Listening to it is a revelation, still, every time. And reading it-” Her voice got stuck, and silence fell between them for a few minutes; in it many, many things nobody said.

 

“Do you think it’s the best I’ll ever do?” His gaze had taken on a familiar intensity that made her stomach shrink up and her heart stutter.

“I don’t know,” she responded. “But if it is, nobody will say they overestimated you.”

She dropped her gaze. “Why did you send it to me?” it escaped her, the question burning itself out of her mouth, not unlike the tea earlier.

He raked his fingers through his hair, a near embarrassed smile on his face that turned into an awkward laugh only a few moments later, before he answered.

 

“You know, it’s weird. I can never tell _why_ I write something. Only what goes into it. And a lot of people have asked me what went into that song. I keep telling them about seeing the Berlin Wall from my studio window, when I had the idea for it. That’s true, but it’s only one half of the truth. The other half... I’m not quite sure what happened there, but one day our evening from two years ago came back to me. How hopeful I felt that night, awful circumstances notwithstanding. What it was like, stealing time with you, again; and what I thought upon reading your note the next morning, written from a perspective on life so very unlike my own back then, and still so much more insightful in many ways. And somehow that assembled itself in my mind. Setting, subject, atmosphere… The moment I got it down on paper was the moment I decided on writing to you. Putting the lyrics in the letter seemed like the natural thing to do.”

 

Her legs gave the impression that they wouldn’t be carrying her for much longer, so she let herself sink onto her paisley patterned couch. He came over and sat down next to her in a slow, smooth movement, a rather shy smile on his face. “I thought you’d have figured it out already. Since I did give myself away a little by using the same atrocity of a paper for both.”

She shook her head, a sudden dryness in her mouth. “No. I didn’t figure anything out. Maybe, I could have, though. Everything you do is by design, there’s always a second meaning somewhere.” She looked at him. “But I do have a history of missing the forest for the trees, especially when it comes to things like that. I also didn’t realise how much of _you_ I had really put into my novel, before reading it through after editing, without the red pencil at the ready. The broadness of the hints was shocking.”

Astonishment cast itself over his features at her words. “I’ve read your book twice. I honestly didn’t notice.”

“But it’s so obvious!” she said, a startled laugh on her lips. “Elroy, the guitar player – I went on half a page about how he is smoking his cigarette in one of your outfits from ‘75. The girl without name on the bus, she has a habit of singing _Young Americans_ under her breath. Thea, in the chapter before she dies, even says something along the lines of _Change is beautiful,_ just to reverse it in her last scene, with the words _Maybe I was wrong about change._ And Santiago, he goes even further, when he prays, sending _words on wings flying to the heavens._ How did you not notice? I was convinced you’d call me out on it!”

 

They stared at each other for half a minute straight – and then all restraint went completely out of the window, as they broke into boisterous laughter that brought tears to their eyes, and likely woke the whole neighbourhood in its exuberance. He was the first one to collect himself enough to speak again, wiping his eyes with his hand.

“Blimey, look at us both,” he managed, breathlessly. “I think I’ll have to shamefully join the no-forest-in-sight-crowd.”

“You’re welcome,” she brought out, and they both started laughing again.

Somehow, a while later, they made it back to coherence, still a pair of enormous grins on their faces, and a little giggling here and there, but they were not completely put out of commission any more; and she organised some tissues for their laughing tears, and a plate of chocolate biscuits from the kitchen while she was at it.

“God, I needed that,” she stated, falling back on the sofa with a sigh, and leaning against the headrest, a relaxed smile on her face.

He bowed forward and treated himself to a biscuit and a sip of tea, still slightly grinning; and she watched his hands and mouth as he put the cup to his lips. “I could get used to this, you know?” she said. “You, sitting on my paisley, drinking tea, eating biscuits. Laughing.”

“Oh, I’ll be a fat old geezer before you know it, if I keep that up.”

“And I’ll turn into a fat old hag, watching you become a fat old geezer. Such is life.”

 

His grin broadened, and he let himself sink back into the cushions, looking at her with a curious expression. “What do you think sex is like with seventy?” he asked, furrowing his brows, and she could barely keep another salvo of laughter from bubbling out of her insides.

“Probably just very, very slow,” she gave back.

“The boners come and go. Nothing holds up,” he added, in a grave voice.

“Also, think of the joint pain. Every bloody position is a drag.”

“Even climbing the bed becomes an adventure.”

She bit her lower lip, a deeply amused smile tugging on it. “Dear me. What a prospect. We better seize the time until then. What do you think?”

“ _God_ I was hoping you’d say that,” he retorted with a sincerely relieved laugh; and then he was kissing her, like it was easy, like he’d spent his life doing nothing else, and she wrapped her arms around his neck and let him in, laughing into the kiss.

 

***

 

“Bedroom. Now”, she demanded only a short while later, when he had already moved on from kissing her mouth, and ridded her of her dress and a good part of her countenance, now engrossed in the thorough exploration of her neck and shoulders.

He halted, and smiled at her, mischievously. “If I recall correctly, you had no problem doing me on the sofa.”

“That wasn’t _my_ sofa.”

“Fair enough.” He let go of her with considerable reluctance; and a surprised laugh slipped past his lips, when she dragged him to his feet by his shirt only an instant later, walking backwards into her bedroom and pulling him along, so she didn’t have to stop enjoying the view. And what a view he was, with his messed up hair, the smirk on his lips, the wakeful eyes and a splash of red on his cheeks that didn’t stem from the remnants of rouge he had put on some time during the day.

“My bed,” she warned, before flicking the light switch with her free hand. “Is not very big.”

He looked over her shoulder and laughed. “I’ve had worse. We’ll make do.”

 

Then his eyes fixed on her again, and suddenly she felt like she would die, if she didn’t get underneath his clothes in the next few seconds. “If you’re wearing one of those chastity trousers again, I swear to God, I’ll find the scissors,” she said, not completely in jest, as she sat down on the bed, eagerly shoving up his shirt, so she could press a hungry kiss just above his navel, soaking in the scent of his skin. He took the hint and stripped off his shirt completely, leaving her with the glorious sight of his naked upper body, before his hands found their way into her hair; while she kept admiring his abdomen with her fingers and mouth, briefly slowed down in her pursuit of what lay below the belt.

 

“I’ve missed this, too. Apart from a million other things,” she said, interrupting her exploration for a second to glance up at him.

His expression changed, turning into something very earnest at her words. “Let’s not wait two years ‘til the next time, then.”

She shook her head. “Not even one. Not even half of one. I’m done waiting.”

“Both of us.” He stroked her temple with his thumb, a soft smile on his lips, before clearing his throat. “Speaking of waiting, though… Would you mind addressing the problem at hand?” He made a downward movement with his head, and raised his brows, his smile turning into a wolfish grin.

Her eyes took on an innocuous look that she hoped would do credit to his own, patented version of it. “What problem?” Her hand drifted down past his waistband, then a little lower, and squeezed, wringing a sound from his throat that immediately set her back on occupying herself with the stupid, interfering buttons on his jeans.

“If you kill me,” he said, hoarsely. “Have fun with the tabloids tomorrow.”

“Oh, I’m sure the headlines would be smashing: _BESTSELLING AUTHOR BLOWS ROCKSTAR, HE DIES._ Thoughts on that?”

 

Finally she had his trousers open, unzipped, and pulled down; and _that_ view was in no way inferior to the one before.

“Well, I’ll die happy. Tell them to mention that,” he retorted, gently; and after that he didn’t say anything else for quite a while, because she went down on him with abandon. His hands were still in her hair, and she could feel his fingers digging into her scalp, low groans falling from his mouth, encouraging her, until she sensed his thumb against her cheek, a request. She pulled off; and he raised her to her feet, kissing her with a wicked swivel of his tongue into her mouth.

 

In the next moment he’d already pushed her down onto the bed, back first, diving after her to catch her lips again, as she wrapped her legs around his back and pulled him down even further, until most of his skin made contact with most of hers, and only the elbows he had placed at the sides of her head kept him hovering over her, while they kissed, long enough for her to develop serious oxygen issues.

Luckily he let go of her, before she suffocated, but only to look her straight in the eye, which really didn’t do her breathing rate any good.

“Sorry for taking so long,” he said, quietly.

“Just two years. I gave you one hundred. That’s well within limit.”

He smiled down at her, fondness in his unmatched eyes. “True.”

She strengthened the grip of her legs on his lower back. “How about you get in there, before we both die of frustration, and we push the talking bits to later?”

A grin started spreading on his face. “Grand idea. I’m on it.”

***

 

The room was submerged in blue darkness, safe for the orange glow of a smouldering cigarette end, right next to the opened window opposite, when she woke. She sat up, quietly, and took in his lean silhouette for a while, blowing out smoke into the night sky; before taking a heart and making her way to him over the cool wooden floor. He noticed her just before she arrived at the window, and she couldn’t see his face, but there was a smile in his voice when he said: “Want some?”

She let him hand her the glowing cigarette and took a pull, before giving it back.

“How late is it?” she asked, smoke leaving her lips with the question.

“Does it matter?”

“Not really.”

He sighed, flicking the rest of the cigarette out over the windowsill. She watched it tumble down all the way to the pavement.

“I’ll be around the world in two months,” he said, something sombre in his words. “It never stops.”

“ _The planets keep revolving with little regard for two people at a bus stop in the desert._ ”

“That’s from your book.”

“I know. It applies.”

“It does.”

Suddenly, she felt the touch of his hand on her cheek in the dark. “ _There were good things in the past, just as there will be good things in the future_ ,” he murmured, stroking her skin. “How very right you were.”

“ _Leaving you shouldn’t feel like a novelty_ ,” she added, looking at his darkened shape; and found herself being pulled into an embrace only a second later.

“Who said anything about leaving?”

“I just did,” she gave back, her cheek against his chest, looking at the sky outside, that slowly coloured itself in dusk.

He pressed a kiss into her hair. “I’ll get my arse back on that paisley, even if I have to whisk you and the sofa away to Tokyo for it.”

“You’re outrageous,” she said, softly.

He pulled her closer, surrounding her with the smell of smoke, sweat and promises.

“And you’re beautiful.”

The sky turned brighter, a washed-out blue, then orange; and she wondered, what sunrises in Tokyo looked like. _Maybe_ , she thought, _I’ll find out very soon._


End file.
